Inspiring Small Digital Agencies, Marketers & Entrepreneurs.

In this article, I take a look at outsourcing versus insourcing your SEM campaigns.

When it comes to SEM (defined here as both the Search and Display networks in Google AdWords), you have more flexibility to manage in-house. Why? Depending on the size of the campaign, the work requires as little as one SEM campaign manager. Continue reading →

In the course of pitching for jobs over the years, I’ve seen my fair share of desperate SEO/SEM agencies who’d reduce their fees to ridiculous levels and even throw in all sorts of promises and guarantees, in order to win. This is an unsustainable strategy and devalues our industry.

Over time, SEO/SEM services will become commoditized. Clients are willing to pay less and in return, agencies have to take on more clients to cover their overheads, thus, compromising on service quality. Clients don’t get the results they expect and put the money somewhere else. Every one loses – you, your peers, the client! Continue reading →

Marketers are always faced with this conundrum – to outsource SEO and SEM, or build your own internal team. Startups especially, often feel that performance marketing should be a core competency and most would build their own team once they have enough funding.

Malaysia Airlines for instance, believes in managing their SEM campaigns internally, with support from Google’s travel team. On the other hand and despite online being their main sales channel, AirAsia prefers working with external specialists like SearchGuru.

There is no right or wrong anwser. I’m going to help you decide by laying out the “real world” pros and cons, for both SEO and SEM respectively. Continue reading →